Some Philly GameStops Requiring Fingerprints for Trade-Ins

Let's say you're a 14-year-old kid, and you have a stack of old games that you want to sell or trade in at your local GameStop. You walk into the store, heave your armload of titles onto the countertop, and steel yourself for the news that the games you probably spent $600 on years ago are now worth around $6 in total. However, before you can proceed with the transaction, the GameStop makes a request: Can you please submit to a fingerprint scan? No scan, no trade.

According to a new report from CBS Philadelphia, GameStop representatives from the area claim that they're simply following a local law that requires pawnbrokers to collect fingerprints.

The process is one "that we've recently implemented (starting in early July) in Philadelphia area stores at the request of the Philadelphia police department," a GameStop representative told Kotaku.

That said, Philadelphia's city solicitor, Shelley Smith, told CBS that GameStop isn't technically considered a pawnbroker and doesn't have to take fingerprints. But it can, and the Philadelphia Police Department seems to appreciate the stores' response to its alleged request.

Any fingerprints these GameStop stores collect get uploaded to LeadsOnline, an online database that processes millions of monthly transactions by more than 10,000 different secondhand goods stores around the country. It's an intermediary between these secondhand stores and law enforcement, which the latter can access simply by typing in a case number of particular crime they're investigating. Once they do that, they can search through these transactionsregardless of where they took placeby a variety of different criteria.

If this sounds all new and Big Brother-esque, similar information-gathering processes have already been rolled out in a number of states that consider selling used video games to a secondhand store no different than selling items to a pawn shop, as a 2012 report from Polygon highlighted.

Nevertheless, according to some of the quotes obtained by CBS from GameStop shoppers, not everyone is thrilled about the new fingerprinting policies. "I really don't appreciate it. You fingerprinted me like I'm in a police district. No, I'm at a game store," one unnamed individual said.

For more, check out PCMag's rundown of August's Hottest Video Game Releases in the slideshow above.

David Murphy got his first real taste of technology journalism when he arrived at PC Magazine as an intern in 2005. A three-month gig turned to six months, six months turned to occasional freelance assignments, and he has since rejoined his tech-loving, mostly New York-based friends as one of PCMag.com's news contributors.
His rise to (self-described) fame in the world of tech journalism began during his stint as an associate editor at Maximum PC, where his love of cardboard-based PC construction and meetings put him in...
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